The cartoon intifada, cont’d

The spontaneous appearance over the past few days of dozens of Danish flags ready for the burning raises further questions about where the flags came from.
A lot of this “spontaneity” was clearly staged. The cartoons gained a wider audience when radical Danish clerics toured the Middle East last month, showing the offending cartoons to the heads of several of the major Islamist groups in the region. Just in case the originals weren’t offensive enough, the clerics also supplied a few of their own cartoons, ever more inflammatory, and said they sprang from the pens of the infidels. One of the clerics, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Ladan, explained in an interview that the tour was meant to “internationalize this issue.” The clerics told their hosts that Muslims do not have the right to build mosques in Denmark, and repeated other ridiculous lies to foment discord and ridicule the Danish government.
The radical clerics in Denmark have succeeded, a fact pundits and analysts on both sides have largely missed. The focus has been on the assault on freedom of expression in the name of religious tolerance, as it should be, but that was not what Abu Ladan and his travelers had in mind when they toured the Middle East. They wanted to create a groundswell of discontent among Muslims in Europe, put pressure on Denmark — and other nations — to abide by sharia law and to build a sympathetic base for further terrorist attacks. The placards of British Muslims, demanding more “7/7s,” a reference to the London subway bombings on July 7, went straight to the point of the clerics’ Middle East tour. This was an exercise in agitprop to further the goals of Islamofascism, and it worked.

To read the New York Times or listen to intimidated European politicians you might think that the current angry demonstrations calling for death to the cartoonists were spontaneous eruption of anger. The demonstration in reaction to the cartoons in September of last year may have been spontaneous. But the campaign in the last two weeks to bully tiny Denmark has been funded by the Saudis and other Arab governments.

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The cartoon intifada, cont’d

The spontaneous appearance over the past few days of dozens of Danish flags ready for the burning raises further questions about where the flags came from.
A lot of this “spontaneity” was clearly staged. The cartoons gained a wider audience when radical Danish clerics toured the Middle East last month, showing the offending cartoons to the heads of several of the major Islamist groups in the region. Just in case the originals weren’t offensive enough, the clerics also supplied a few of their own cartoons, ever more inflammatory, and said they sprang from the pens of the infidels. One of the clerics, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Ladan, explained in an interview that the tour was meant to “internationalize this issue.” The clerics told their hosts that Muslims do not have the right to build mosques in Denmark, and repeated other ridiculous lies to foment discord and ridicule the Danish government.
The radical clerics in Denmark have succeeded, a fact pundits and analysts on both sides have largely missed. The focus has been on the assault on freedom of expression in the name of religious tolerance, as it should be, but that was not what Abu Ladan and his travelers had in mind when they toured the Middle East. They wanted to create a groundswell of discontent among Muslims in Europe, put pressure on Denmark — and other nations — to abide by sharia law and to build a sympathetic base for further terrorist attacks. The placards of British Muslims, demanding more “7/7s,” a reference to the London subway bombings on July 7, went straight to the point of the clerics’ Middle East tour. This was an exercise in agitprop to further the goals of Islamofascism, and it worked.

To read the New York Times or listen to intimidated European politicians you might think that the current angry demonstrations calling for death to the cartoonists were spontaneous eruption of anger. The demonstration in reaction to the cartoons in September of last year may have been spontaneous. But the campaign in the last two weeks to bully tiny Denmark has been funded by the Saudis and other Arab governments.